Integration of sustainability and resilience aspects into the assessment of energy system technologies

Abstract

Against the background of the energy transition, sustainability and resilience have become important concepts for the design of energy systems in recent years. In most studies, both concepts are considered separately, leading to inefficient system designs lacking a holistic view. So far, there are hardly any possibilities to investigate both concepts together, and few established methods for resilience assessments are available. For this reason, a systematic analysis methodology for integrated resilience and sustainability assessment of energy systems was created in this study. The developed method was tested on a MONA reference low-voltage grid considering several energy transition scenarios with different penetrations of electric vehicles, PV systems on apartment houses, and grid storages. For the resilience assessment, the analysis methodology developed applied a deterministic simulation approach including electrotechnical conditions, what allows the formation of quantitative indicators on realistic system behaviour. The system’s sustainability in this approach was assessed using results from life cycle assessment and life cycle costing studies for the different technologies used in the scenarios. Additionally, the indicators were assigned to different sustainable development goals. The results showed a dependency of resilience and sustainability aspects because different system design options might improve the system’s resilience, but at the same time reduce the overall sustainability, particularly using a grid storage. Moreover, it was shown that the joint consideration of structural and performance resilience indicators proves to be a promising approach to link cause and effect, a complex relationship between structural and performance indicators testified in this study. In addition, and to prevent distortion due to system characteristics, it makes sense to use several performance indicators. Both the theoretical review and the practical investigation show that resilience and sustainability need to be weighed against each other, especially in terms of efficiency. However, it is crucial that one concept does not dominate the other but that both concepts can make their contribution. Resilience should be seen as part of sustainability but also as an important prerequisite for the sustainable transition of energy systems.